Archive for June, 2018

The weekend was the first real heatwave of the year and it’s damn near killed me. The first couple of days I weathered pretty well, but I was also able to leave the house with The Wife and Kid to get some a/c and what not. Monday I was just trapped in our house. I didn’t want to put the a/c’s in because it was supposed to cool down afterwards, but I should have. Last night I didn’t sleep much at all, my little girl didn’t sleep, and I have felt like hell all day today.

Nausea. Diarrhea. Sweats. A bit dizzy at times. Weak.

It’s been a throw away day as the heat and lack of sleep from the past three days have just piled up and knocked me down. The Wife and I go back and forth over getting central air, weeks/days like this push it over the edge for me. I just can’t stand the heat.

So, apparently The Grand Orange PooBah has decided that we need to prop up coal and nuclear by buying electricity from their plants rather than from whatever plant might offer us the best price. Considering the big reason coal has been hammered in the electricity market is that natural gas came around and was gobs cheaper, something tells me that electricity coming from coal plants is going to be more expensive.

Now, who do you think will bear the burden of these costs for propping up this outdated industry? Just a wild guess, but I’m thinking it’s going to be me. And you. And whoever else gets stuck buying from these coal companies.

While I feel a certain amount of sympathy for the folks who grew up counting on these jobs, and who have seen their towns die as these jobs have left, I can’t afford to prop them up, either. And I’m from Michigan, I still live in the Rust Belt, I’ve seen the shifting winds of the auto industry wipe out all sorts of local economies and entire towns. It sucks in a big way.

But it happens. Instead of propping them up, we should be finding the best way of moving these folks out of there and pushing not necessarily them but their kids and grandkids, all of the folks coming after them, into fields that will take coal’s place in their lives.

What’s really ironic, or just pure bullshit, about this mess is the administrations tossing around that we need to prop up coal for national security. If we’re looking at propping something up or forcing us to support something for national security, then every vehicle on the road should be electric. Nations that are the most hostile to us seem to get quite a bit of cash from oil. Want to make our nation more secure? Make it safer? Put a big fat dent in that funding for these other nations.